of the land. so, the liberals want them to littleer, inch over a bit, but the consumer -- conservatives are trying to hold him back to where he always was. meanwhile, you have this chief declaring that there is no such thing as an obama judge or trump judge, no such thing as a bush judge. he wants to project a bench that is in political when they all have their agendas of sorts. >> tonight at 8 p.m. eastern on "q&a." american history tv is on c-span3 every weekend and all of our programs are archived on our website. you can watch lectures from college classrooms, tumors of historic sites, archival films, and see our schedule of upcoming programs. that's c-span.org/history.

benjamin francis fallon talks about the spanish speaking vote in the 20th century. he describes a group with distinct interests and voting patterns and outlines how the national democratic and republican parties have courted various hispanic constituencies. interview was recorded at the annual american historical association meeting. professor benjamin francis fallon studies and teaches this. let's talk about the hispanic vote. is it a monolithic group? >> no, definitely not. the history of the hispanic vote is one of steadily trying to add to people, people that saw themselves quite the family in national origin terms, for example, mexican-americans, puerto ricans, cubans, the whole project if you will is one of trying to bring very different

peoples together into some kind of coalition or consensus about what they all stood for and it has been a project that has stood over the years and revealed to be a very diverse internally. definitely not. but that has always been one of the ambitions of the people that propel hispanic politics, that there should be this unity of people who are fundamentally so much alike that they ought to act as one. it has been a distance between the ambition of architects of let politics and the reality of people with very different origins and experiences. >> generally speaking, if you look at cuban americans, especially in florida, they tended to vote republican. mexican-americans generally tend to vote democratic. why is that? socialization involving these groups in the united states has been different. the cubans are always -- as a

counterpoint, the outlier in the latino constituency. their arrival happened at a very different time and under distinctly different circumstances. they came from the caribbean. back, cuban-americans have a different trajectory and in many ways stay away from the other large latino mexican-american groups. they have sort of different issues and are much more involved in foreign policy as a concern and their primary focus was on returning to cuba and isng away with castro, where mexican-americans and puerto ricans had concerns that were much more like but distinct from african-americans. concerns that related to being minority populations in the united states of america. concerns about urban poverty, concerns about access to jobs and quality education.

they were kept on very different tracks for a long time when democrats did alright with cubans initially, the cubans were not big voters yet, they were expecting a good turn, by the 70's with the republican party particularly, the advance of conservatism was that conservative -- cubans found a real home in that position in the 1970's. >> where do you go to research the topic and what are the major benchmarks you are looking at? >> because we are talking about communities from across the country, communities of east los angeles, rural counties in northern new mexico, the west

side of san antonio, the south bronx in new york, different communities that have their own sort of local histories throughout most of the 20th century's. cubans arriving in the late 50's through to the present day, going to all of those places is the key to understanding how local latino political communities identified themselves and what they thought of the political parties and their areas. also a look at the presidential archives, the presidential election is where the hispanic exists, is manifest, because this is an effort, the presidential campaign since 1960 , revolved around in listing the kind of national latino electorate. at the national level, at the level of u.s. presidents, we see attempts to organize these various distinct latino

constituencies into something kind of manageable and usable for themselves. breaking -- >> breaking it down, how have the parties attempted to court and wu? >> republicans, so republicans, tracing this back to the 1960's, democrats were in office in the presidency. democrats primary minority concern was how to satisfy and mobilize african american civil rights movement. republicans began to identify in mexican-americans specifically a group that was disenchanted with their status within the democratic party, which seemed to be to some mexican-americans primarily concerned with black interests. so a number of prominent republicans from the southwest in the 1960's, barry goldwater, the arizona conservative, john

tower, a republican senator from texas, and ronald reagan, made strong it feels to mexican-americans on the basis of his sense of racial victimization and that they have legitimate concerns around discrimination and inclusion in the democratic party and they offered, republicans did, a chance to hold out the prospect of a better deal from republicans. to some degree, putting african-americans in their place. by the time of richard nixon, republicans were in office when nixon was sworn in and nixon had to figure out what am i going to do for these people that we spent the 1960's saying we would do much better for you. republicans maintained a certain element of racial polarization, that is they pitted mexican-americans, especially, and african-americans in context with one another.

they also added more positive programs for the initiation of affirmative-action programs in the federal civil service to provide new levels of access to white-collar employment. primarily for mexican-americans. and also articulated elaborated on nuclear programs for small business aid. trying to aid latino entrepreneurs. mexican-americans and cuban-americans especially tried to be cultivated in the middle class of those communities around the idea that discrimination was sure a thing but individuals who worked hard to find support from the federal government for their own upward mobility. what about the democrats? >> they had a different set of constituents. throughout the 1960's the challenge for democrats was how to balance the insurgent black movement and how to balance the demands of black civil rights with what mexican-americans were

feeling were their own civil rights concerns. includingg ways of mexican-americans and, to a degree, puerto rican civil rights, the war on poverty, these were the challenges for democrats and they didn't particularly do a fantastic job of managing those things. in part, because, they found a certain benefit in having mexican-americans and african-americans not uniting against them. there was a certain benefit ship -- benefit in playing those constituencies against each other. >> cesar chavez pushed for equality for migrant workers. did that in any way play into the politics of the time? >> it certainly did. for democrats the challenge was how to sort of respect the -- of the sort of cultural respect and

determination with the autonomy the blackhrough community and the mexican-american community and puerto ricans. with respect to civil rights and the cultural particularities of hanging ontoies, some of the core principles of the new deal that goes around , broad programs built around everyone being an american. the farmworker insurgency plays a role particularly in the state of california that at the farmworkervel the program was influential in the 72 democratic party platform, verycgovern candidacy, a left liberal candidacy, and what it showed is that there was this moment for democrats were not particularly successful at capitalizing on it on electoral terms that they were fumbling towards a way of synthesizing the urge towards cultural ,espect and autonomy

determination and inclusion from the latino community but also finding a way to square that with the need to develop an economic program that would appeal to working-class people more broadly. through thest a bit 1970's and there are moments where the culture and classes will of the democratic party , though nother spectacularly, at the ballot box. orif you go to an atm express checkout, it's english or spanish, we have become a bilingual society. is that a good thing or a bad thing in terms of where we have come from and where we are today? i haven't studied it particularly, but i think it's an element of realism. whether it is good or bad, people speak spanish in this society and to accommodate them good, it's probably business for most of these companies that do that. it's a basic level of respect that communities have for a long time fought for.

not just in the business realm, but certainly in politics. in 1965 we know the great voting rights act that was seen by most people in the united states as a victory for african-americans, it contained a little-known provision that honored the puerto rican access to the ballot i making their ability to be literate in the english-language not disqualifying. that's just one example of the many ways in which english language or access to inclusion in the society around language was always a political issue. >> what is your message for fellow historians here in chicago at the american historical association? >> something that pertains particularly to my scholarship? research.

>> well, read my book? i don't know, we are doing what we can to show the complexities and leckie -- latino communities. historians are doing a good job in discovering the nuances but are the ways in which there efforts to bring together people from this very diverse community. >> how did you research your book and what intrigue you the most? to the placest where the first latino congressman came from. east los angeles, san antonio, i went to new mexico, which had a of the u.s. senate actually of mexican heritage throughout the 20th century. before there was ever an italian-american senator there was a spanish-american senator. i went to those communities.

studied and researched the archives in new york and in d.c. looking for the points of connection among communities that had historically seen themselves as different but were evermore being brought into contact with one another. in thewhen you are classroom teaching to students, what are the most common questions? what are they asking you? ,> i teach other things as well but when i do teach this i think that students are generally surprised because like most of the population, they haven't seen this kind of texture and within the communities. the label hasn't been effective or homogenizing or standardizing extraordinary diversity. when you ask people, they say oh, my grandmother is cuban and she doesn't like -- turns out she doesn't like puerto ricans. try to figure out why.

again, just a tremendous amount of distinction among themselves. ok, part of the idea is to introduce students to those distinctions in which for better or worse -- worse they have cut a channel for and many of those are stuck with one another in finding out ways to build up meaningful coalitions and defendant interest as a collective. >> on this topic, do we have another project in the works. >> able ton essay use about the ways that liberals and conservatives have fought over the question of immigration

and shaped each other's strategies and brought us to the present day, that is what i would like to do next. >> we look forward to that research. benjamin francis fallon, thank you for being with us. >> think so much, appreciate it. americane watching history tv. all weekend, every weekend, on c-span3. in 1956, while working as a historian at the vicksburg national military park, edward -- edwin barrs set out to preserve the union warship sunk in 1862 during the civil war. of next, he details the challenges his team faced in removing the shift from the yazoo river.